1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process and apparatus for retrieving and displaying information on videotapes and, more particularly, to a process and apparatus for quickly and precisely retrieving and displaying specific images and testimony in a videotaped deposition by indexing a computer-generated transcript of the deposition proceedings with a video timecode number address on the videotape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the field of litigation, a deposition is a proceeding in which an attorney asks oral questions of a witness, and a word-for-word record of the questions asked and the answers given is called the deposition transcript. Historically, a deposition was recorded by a stenographer so that the only record comprised a written transcript of the questions and answers. However, recent trends, particularly in major and/or complex litigation cases, is to videotape depositions so that the deposition record comprises a videotape along with the customary written transcript.
From time to time during the trial of a lawsuit, it becomes necessary or desirable to present to the court and/or jury a specific part of a deposition. Historically, when the record of the deposition comprised only a written transcript, reference to the specific part of the deposition was made by referring to the appropriate page and line of the written transcript and reading that particular part of the deposition. However, when the deposition has been videotaped, and the deposition is being used to impeach, or to expose an inconsistency between a witness, deposition and trial testimony, it is highly desirable to let the court and jury view and hear the witness, prior inconsistent testimony. Prior to the present invention, attorneys have been reluctant to use video depositions to impeach witnesses because the act of locating a specific part of the witness, testimony was a game of hit and miss involving use of the video recorder's fast-forward and fast-rewind controls to locate the impeaching testimony. In addition to being a boring and time-consuming process, this prior practice involved an inherent danger in that it was an inexact process that was performed in the presence of the jury so that if some objectionable or inadmissible testimony by the witness was inadvertently played for the jury, the attorney risked having his judgment overturned or being involved in a long and costly appeal. Also, many complex and/or major litigation cases involve the taking of numerous depositions, many of which require the use of several video tapes and fill hundreds of pages of recorded transcripts. Consequently, such a hit and miss process for locating specific parts of videotaped deposition testimony was highly impractical and unworkable.
While videotape retrieval systems are known, and videotape technology has been applied in many fields of use, no successful attempt has been made to adapt videotape technology to the field of litigation. The successful adaptation of videotape technology to the litigation field requires that the video information be precisely indexed and that the system have the capacity to quickly and precisely access specific deposition testimony occurring anywhere in the deposition without prior programming (preselection) of the access locations.
Prior video retrieval systems require the user to pre-program a limited number of deposition passages onto the tape or laser disk for later presentation. If the laser disk or tape is for courtroom use, this is unacceptable because the attorney has no flexibility to use deposition segments other than those pre-recorded on the laser disk or tape. However, an attorney rarely knows in advance whether it will be necessary to impeach a witness at trial with a prior inconsistent statement, or exactly what part or parts of a deposition transcript will be necessary and useful for impeachment purposes.
Accordingly, it is highly desirable to have a process and an apparatus capable of quickly and selectively presenting any deposition part, i.e., any particular question and answer, from any part of a videotaped deposition.
Examples of prior art video systems are U.S. Pat. No. 4,600,989 which discloses a video system capable of accessing specific tape locations, but not capable of accessing specific recorded data. Also, this system lacks precision in that it is designed to display information appearing for approximately one-half a second before a desired frame. U.S. Pat. No. 4,634,386 discloses a video teaching system which limits the user to a specific number of preselected tape locations, rather than providing the user with the capacity to structure a presentation including as many of the videotape segments as desired. U.S. Pat. No. 4,831,367 discloses a video information presentation system which only identifies tape locations, but has no capacity to search the contents of the videotape to allow the user to determine which tape locations shall be accessed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,203 discloses a video recorder and computer system combination in which each component records and displays where related information is stored in its own mechanism as well as in its counterpart mechanism. This system is simply a means of storing various types of images onto a videotape and keeping a record of the image locations on a computer connected to the videotape recorder. The system does no anticipate video applications such as depositions where the images will remain static and audio track will have to be indexed to a transcript of the proceedings. In the legal arena, it is quick access to a specific word or passage location that determines a system's usefulness, rather than the ability to locate a visual image. U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,387 discloses a system by which a stenographer can control a video camera so that one stenographer can stenographically record a deposition while simultaneously operating a video camera and recorder from the stenographer's work station. This system's main objective is to provide a system to accurately record a deposition and not to precisely locate and present specific passage of the videotape deposition.